“Apply” buttons in forms can be confusing. People sometimes think they have to hit Apply before they hit OK But OK really means “make the change and close,” while Apply means “make the change but don’t close.” Also, a Cancel button on a form with an Apply button doesn’t actually cancel actions that were applied, just those since the last apply. At least that’s the way it works in many Windows dialogs, like Windows Explorer’s:
Excel’s Conditional Formatting dialog adds an extra wrinkle. Below I’ve modified a rule to change the color for orange for macaroons. I haven’t hit Apply yet, so I could choose:
1. Apply to save the change and keep on working
2. OK to save the changes and exit
3. Cancel to exit without saving
Once I hit Apply, the Cancel button changes to a Close button. At this point OK and Close mean the same thing: close the form. It seems like Close is just a placeholder for the Cancel button, which will reappear once I start to change something. It is nice that Close and Cancel actually mean what I’d expect with this dialog.
A less confusing form might be one with just an Apply and a Close button. It’s really all you need, and the only downside haveing to click Apply and then Close instead of OK. I did this on one of my own utility forms, but in general I’ll keep using OK buttons because that’s the norm.
Adding an Apply Button to My Flexible Chooser Form
Back in A Flexible VBA Chooser Form I showed how to create a simple form to which you pass some values and which returns a choice. The example let the user pick from a list of pivot fields and then highlighted the field’s range and showsed some information about it. For this post, I modified that code to add an “Apply” button, so you can stay in the form and show info for different fields as long as you want.
Much of the form’s code is unchanged from the earlier post, so read it if you want more background. Its “ClosedWithOk” property is now a more flexible FormState one that stores whether the Apply, OK or Close button was clicked. The code that calls the form is also mostly similar, with a Do While loop added to manage the Apply button. Here it is:
Dim pvt As Excel.PivotTable
Dim lo As Excel.ListObject
Dim StartingCell As Excel.Range
Dim i As Long
Dim FormState As String
Dim DoneWithForm As Boolean
Dim PivotFieldNames() As String
Dim pvtField As Excel.PivotField
Dim ChosenName As String
Set pvt = ActiveSheet.PivotTables("pvtRecordTemps")
Set lo = ActiveSheet.ListObjects("tblRecordTemps")
Set StartingCell = ActiveCell
With pvt
ReDim PivotFieldNames(1 To .VisibleFields.Count) As String
For i = 1 To .VisibleFields.Count
PivotFieldNames(i) = .VisibleFields(i).Name
Next i
DoneWithForm = False
Do While Not DoneWithForm
ChosenName = GetChoiceFromChooserForm(PivotFieldNames, "Choose a Pivot Field", FormState)
DoneWithForm = (FormState <> "Apply")
If ChosenName = vbNullString Then
GoTo Exit_Point
End If
Set pvtField = .PivotFields(ChosenName)
With pvtField
Union(.DataRange, lo.ListColumns(.SourceName).DataBodyRange).Select
MsgBox Title:=.SourceName, _
Prompt:="The SourceName for " & ChosenName & " is:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & .SourceName
End With
Loop
End With
Exit_Point:
StartingCell.Select
End Sub
I had to add a ByRef variable, “FormState,” to the function that initializes and gets the choice from the userform. That’s because, in addition to returning the choice, this function now returns whether the OK, Apply or Close button was clicked:
Dim ufChooser As frmChooser
Dim strChoicesToPass() As String
ReDim strChoicesToPass(LBound(strChoices) To UBound(strChoices))
strChoicesToPass() = strChoices()
Set ufChooser = New frmChooser
With ufChooser
.Caption = strCaption
.ChoiceList = strChoicesToPass
.Show
FormState = .FormState
If Not FormState = "Close" Then
GetChoiceFromChooserForm = .ChoiceValue
End If
End With
End Function
Download?
I’m glad you asked. Here it is.
Interesting stuff as always Doug.